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Online advertising banners are often subject to banner blindness, meaning that people avoid looking at them. The current study examines whether web surfing while watching television, a form of media multitasking, influences how people respond to online ad banners. The experimental study examines whether people respond differently to an online ad banner which thematically fits with the website content (i.e., banner congruity) and which is animated (i.e., banner animation), taking into account the relevance between media tasks (whether the content of the television program and the website are related). Individuals' cognitive (visual attention paid to the banner, measured by eye-tracking technology) and attitudinal (online banner irritation) advertising responses are measured as dependent variables. The results indicate that during media multitasking with high task relevance, higher visual attention was obtained for an incongruent (versus congruent) ad banner. When task relevance was low, no such differences were found. This two-way interaction effect was not significant for banner irritation. Further, a significant three-way interaction with task relevance, banner congruity, and banner animation was found on banner irritation but not on visual attention. Concretely, the lowest levels of banner irritation were obtained for a congruent, animated banner in a media multitasking context with high task relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topical research efforts on attention to pain often take a critical look at the modulatory role of top-down factors. For instance, it has been shown that the fearful expectation of pain at a location of the body directs attention towards that body part. In addition, motivated attempts to control this pain were found to modulate this prioritization effect. Such studies have often used a temporal order judgment task, requiring participants to judge the order in which two stimuli are presented by indicating which one they perceived first. As this constitutes a forced-choice response format, such studies may be subject to response bias. The aim of the current study was to address this concern. We used a ternary synchrony judgment paradigm, in which participants judged the order in which two somatosensory stimuli occurred. Critically, participants now also had the option to give a ‘simultaneous’ response when they did not perceive a difference. This way we eliminated the need for guessing, and thus reduced the risk of response bias. One location was threatened with the possibility of pain in half of the trials, as predicted by an auditory cue. Additionally, half of the participants (pain control group) were encouraged to avoid pain stimuli by executing a quick button press. The other half (comparison group) performed a similar action, albeit unrelated to the occurrence of pain. Our data did not support threat-induced spatial prioritization, nor did we find evidence that pain control attempts influenced attention in any way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with most models of emotion, research has shown that threatening information receives attentional priority over neutral information. Recently, it has been suggested that the degree to which participants divide their attention across the visual field (the attentional window) may modulate the extent to which salient objects are attentionally prioritised. In the current study, participants were required to identify a target inside one of a variable number of coloured circles. One colour (Conditioned Stimulus, CS +) was fear-conditioned using an electrocutaneous stimulus at tolerance level. This search task was combined with a go/no-go task that required participants to either divide attention across the visual field to create a broad attentional window (global group), or focus their attention on the fixation point to create a narrow attentional window (local group). The results showed that only in the global group was the CS + colour prioritised over the neutral colours, indicating that a broader attentional window leads to enhanced attentional prioritisation of threat. Implications for research on attentional bias to threat are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction : There is preliminary evidence that viewing touch or pain can modulate the experience of tactile stimulation. The aim of this study was to develop an experimental paradigm to investigate whether the observation of needle pricks to another person's hand facilitates the detection of subtle somatic sensations. Furthermore, differences between control persons and persons reporting synaesthesia for pain (i.e., experiencing observed pain as if it is their own pain) will be examined. Method : Synaesthetes (n = 15) and controls (n = 20) were presented a series of videos showing left or right hands being pricked and control videos (e.g., a sponge being pricked), whilst receiving occasionally subtle threshold sensations themselves on the hand in the same spatial location (congruent trials) or in the opposite location (incongruent trials) as the visual stimuli. Participants were asked to detect the sensory stimulus. Signal detection theory was used to compare whether sensitivity was different for both groups and both categories of visual stimuli. Results : Overall, perceptual sensitivity (d ′) was significantly higher when the visual stimuli involved a painful situation (e.g., needle pricking another's hand) compared to the control videos, and was significantly lower in synaesthetes compared to control participants. When no sensory stimulus was administered, participants reported significantly more illusory sensations when a painful situation was depicted compared to a non-painful situation. Discussion : This study suggests that the detection of somatic sensations can be facilitated or inhibited by observing visual stimuli. Synaesthetes were generally less sensitive, suggesting that they experience more difficulties in disentangling somatic and visual stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]